Mad Magazine used to subsist purely through
subscription/
cover price and money from its
parent company,
DC Comics (a subsidiary of
AOL Time Warner PepsiCo Blockbuster Mazda Fish License & Bait Store, Inc). Starting with (
iirc) the April 2001
issue, they're accepting
ads.
As of April 2001, the ads seem unobtrusive. They're full-size ads, 2 inside on the color pages, and, unfortunately, one on the back cover, where before parodies would be found. Of course, that ad will still find itself folded into oblivion due to the fact that Al Jaffee's fold-ins are still on the inside back cover, but Mad will no longer be able to do upside down issues or other printing tricks.
When U.S. law mandated the printing of a UPC on every magazine, Mad took that and ran, printing a huge UPC as the cover for the first issue that required the symbol, and continued to make fun of the symbol for years to come, captioning it with comments like "closeup of the space left by Alfred E. Neuman's missing tooth". Hopefully, Mad will continue to seek humor in these new necessities.